Three 2011 GABF Medals Provide Oskar Blues With The “Mr. T” Starter Kit
Mama’s Little YELLA PILS, Old Chub Scotch Ale & Deviant Dale’s IPA Win 2011 GABF ® MEDALS
Longmont, Colo… The brewery known for bucking the system and jump starting the canned craft beer movement continued its meteoric rise by earning three medals at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival®.
Oskar Blues Brewery beat out 41 other entries to earn “Best in Class” in the Bohemian Style Pilsner category with a Silver Medal for Mama’s Little YELLA PILS. Mama’s is a refreshing balance of Saaz hops and specialty malts with a lively character and a smooth crisp finish. Old Chub Scotch Ale, a brobdingnagian celebration of rich smoked malts took a bronze in the Scotch Ale Category. Each of these beers was selected out of batches coming from the production brewery in Longmont and has a date on the bottom of the can to identify the freshness of the beer. The award winning Mama’s Little YELLA PILS was canned on Aug. 29 and the Old Chub Scotch Ale was canned on Aug. 26. Take a gander at the dates of your nearest liquor store to find the medal winning batch to take home. “We didn’t set out to produce a ringer batch of these beers, they were chosen from production batches in our cooler,” says head brewer Dave Chichura.
Deviant Dale’s IPA took a silver medal in the most competitive category of the American-Style India Pale Ale, which had 176 entries. The small batch IPA is a fan favorite at Oskar Blues restaurants (Grill & Brew, Lyons, Colo., and Home Made Liquids & Solids, Longmont, Colo.) is scheduled to be available to the public as Oskar Blues’ first 16oz. can in the spring 2012. Last winter, an exclusive batch of Deviant was rolled out to Old Chicago (www.oldchicago.com) locations in Colorado making this beer available outside the walls of Oskar Blues for the first time. The new package is a product of a large expansion plan aimed to continue to meet demand. Oskar Blues has experienced an increase from 42,000 barrels in 2010 to nearly 60,000 in 2011.
“Many of our beers tend to fall outside of a specific category; we enjoy blurring those lines” says Oskar Blues’ soul founder Dale Katechis. “Deviant Dale’s is a product of brewing a beer that we dig, and that our friends at our restaurants want to drink – not to win a medal. To win a medal with that beer puts a deviant smile on our faces.”
The 2011 Great American Beer Festival® competition drew an impressive field of competitors, with 2011 topping last year’s entries by 11 percent. GABF remains the largest commercial beer competition in the world, with 3,930 beers vying for medals (compared to 3,523 entries in 2010). This year’s GABF competition attracted 167 beer judges from nine countries. Award-winning brewers received prestigious gold, silver and bronze medals in 83 beer categories covering 134 beer styles (encompassing subcategories), establishing the best examples of each style in the U.S.
ABOUT OSKAR BLUES – Three-dimensional brewing since 1999, Oskar Blues Brewery (coloRADo, USA) began the “Canned Beer Apocalypse” in 2002 when Dale’s Pale Ale became America’s 1st CANNED craft beer. For additional info visit www.oskarblues.com – @OskarBlues – Facebook
